Ta Mok , (born c. 1926, Takeo province, Cambodia, French Indochina—died July 21, 2006, Phnom Penh, Cambodia) Cambodian guerrilla leader who , as a senior leader of the Khmer Rouge, was believed to have been responsible for many of the worst atrocities of that bloody regime. Ta Mok fought against both the Japanese (1941–45) and the French (until the early 1950s) occupations of his country. After Japan’s defeat he joined the Communist Party, led by Pol Pot. At that time he took the nom de guerre Ta Mok (his birth name was believed to be Ung Choeun, Chhit Choeun, or Ek Choeun). In 1963 Ta Mok was appointed to the Central Committee of the party that became the Khmer Rouge, and a few years later he was given charge of the southwest zone, where some of the most violent excesses of the regime were carried out. In 1978 he was sent to the area bordering Vietnam; later that year Vietnam invaded and overthrew the Khmer Rouge government. Thereafter, Ta Mok led guerrilla campaigns against the government. In 1996 he overthrew Pol Pot as head of the marginalized Khmer Rouge. Ta Mok was captured in 1999 and held in a military prison. He was expected to face genocide charges before an international tribunal but died while awaiting trial.

EXPLORE these related biographies:

principal Chinese Marxist theorist, soldier, and statesman who led his country’s communist revolution. Mao was the leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1935 until his death, and he was chairman (chief of state) of the People’s Republic of China from 1949 to 1959 and chairman of the party also until his death. When China emerged from a half...

Cambodian politician, who was prime minister of Cambodia from 1985. Hun Sen was educated at a Buddhist monastery in Phnom Penh. In the late 1960s he joined the Communist Party of Kampuchea and in 1970 joined the Khmer Rouge. During the regime of Pol Pot (1975–79), when an estimated two million Cambodians lost their lives, Hun Sen fled to Vietnam, joining...

Khmer political leader whose totalitarian regime (1975–79) imposed severe hardships on the Cambodian people. His radical communist government forced the mass evacuations of cities, killed or displaced millions of people, and left a legacy of brutality and impoverishment. The son of a landowning farmer, Saloth Sar was sent at age 5 or 6 to live with...